


questions of self

by liminal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 00:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But you must live your own life eventually. You have one chance only.”  ― Sebastian Faulks, <i>Birdsong</i></p><p>Captain America dies in the same place as the Winter Soldier was born, and Steve reaches the end of a line he’s been travelling on for seventy years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	questions of self

The lift isn’t wide enough for them to stand shoulder to shoulder so they stand straight on, both re-learning a face that once seemed lost forever. There are lines around eyes and brows that weren’t there in Washington, small indicators of lives lived on the edge, of men who have seen enough, done too much. 

They judder down, getting closer to godknowswhat in the middle of godknowswhere, and Steve asks mute questions that Bucky answers with his eyes.

_You ok?_

_Yeah._

_You know I’m with you?_

_’Til the end of the line._

The lift comes to a halt and Bucky stands on the threshold of a place that could be called ‘home’ for all the time he’s spent in its depths, except that his home is a six foot man clad in blue standing in front of him; a new face on an old friend who never did know when to pick the easy route.

The shutter rises and they go forth into the darkness, falling into position together as easily as breathing.

Bucky and Steve, at each other’s sides and with each other’s backs once more, as they always were and always will be.

And God help the fool who tries to wrench them apart.

-

Tony’s face falls and he simmers with anger.

“It wasn’t him,” Steve pleads, but Tony has never been a forgiving man, would punch his way out of Hell rather than turn the other cheek. And somewhere in the back of his mind, shaving that extra 5% off his punches, Steve knows how Tony feels.

Knows why he won’t back down, why he’s throwing everything he’s got at Bucky and then some, why rationality is irrelevant. Knows that the red haze settling over Tony tastes metallic in the mouth, that it’s inspiring a bloodlust Tony never knew he had in him.

In the past, Steve tells Dr Erskine that he doesn’t want to kill anyone, that he just hates bullies. In the past, he tells Peggy that he won’t stop until everyone in Hydra is dead or captured. 

The difference between those moments is Bucky.

Bucky, who deflects punches and throws his own, defending himself but not his actions. Who tells Tony in a voice as cavernous as the hellhole they’re in that he remembers all of them, every person he’s killed. Who pounds on Tony’s armour and wheels away in agony when the metal arm that tore him away from his old life is ripped from him. 

The difference is Bucky, and Steve will let the bloodlust and red haze consume him once again if it keeps Bucky by his side.

-  


They limp out of the bunker, Steve’s arm around Bucky’s waist and the exposed wires in Bucky’s metal shoulder sparking as snowflakes fall. It’s a cold and bleak landscape, and the ragged breaths that Bucky draws do little to cheer Steve up.

Steve. Not Captain America, not America’s Golden Boy, not the leader of the Avengers. Steve, the boy from Brooklyn, who dropped his shield and symbol at Tony’s feet and chose an old friend over a new one.

The Quinjet beckons, but not a destination. Where to go when one of you is a hunted Cold War assassin and the other a fugitive, when together you have ignored UN protocols and wrecked a government facility and an international airport?

Not the Compound.

Not Stark Tower.

Not London or Germany or the mainland US.

Bucky curls up in the back of the jet and Steve drops down in front of the controls, his mind on the broken man he turned his back on. Six inches higher and he’d have been slamming the shield into Tony’s face. Six inches and he’d have been fleeing the scene a murderer- not that he isn’t leaving something dead behind as it is.

The jet’s engines sit idle and Steve turns at the sound of footsteps on the gang-plank.

He ought to be surprised that it’s T’Challa, bringing a bound and gagged Zemo with him, but he can’t muster the energy or emotion. Bucky looks at the intruders with wary, frightened eyes and were it not for the numbness spreading throughout his body, Steve would have the Sokovian by the throat and leave two casualties behind in this godforsaken place.

“Come with me,” T’Challa says and Steve shifts seats, surrenders himself to a calming voice, to someone else’s authority. 

The Wakandan buckles Zemo in and settles himself next to Steve, adjusting the controls to his liking. The jet’s engines roar to life and they’re off somewhere, anywhere, any place but here.

Captain America dies in the same place as the Winter Soldier was born, and Steve reaches the end of a line he’s been travelling on for seventy years.

-

It’s a quiet journey to Wakanda and Steve steps off the plane with a plan ready to be set into motion. The tropical air is a welcome change from Siberian frost and he makes it two metres towards the building they’ve landed in front of before his hyper-resilience runs out, and he drops to his knees.

A weary and worried voice calls out his name, and Steve lets the darkness drag him under.

-

“I will not take sides in this conflict, Mr Rogers. I offer you safe haven and friendship, not allegiance,” T’Challa says slowly.

“Didn’t stop you in Cologne,” Bucky mutters, but his complaint is half-hearted. He’s wearing new clothes, his face is cleaner than Steve has seen it since the war, and his long hair is freshly washed. He looks younger than he has in decades.

He doubles over in pain suddenly, and draws his next breath through gritted teeth. Technicians have rallied around the bed that doubles as an operating table and the stump of his Soviet arm is all but removed. Scar tissue and bone shards lie exposed for the first time since Bucky fell, but specs for a replacement limb are littered around the lab and it’s just a case of waiting for the vibranium to be extracted and crafted.

T’Challa raises an eyebrow, but nods in acknowledgment of Bucky’s taunt. “A decision made in vengeance, and one I am atoning for.”

Steve sighs. “I’m not asking you to take sides, just for you to extend that same protection and friendship to the people who stood with me. If they want it. I can’t just leave them there.”

In the week and a half since the Quinjet landed in Wakanda and the US began its manhunt, Steve has spent every waking hour at Bucky’s side. T’Challa looks between the two of them before he replies.

“You are loyal to a fault, Captain. A virtue and a flaw. But I will allow you to bring your friends. Go, save them.”

-

Even without the shield, it’s all too easy to break into the most secure prison on the planet. Maybe, Steve wonders, it’s easier without the shield and helmet. Cameras capture him in his jeans and sneakers, knocking down security guards and shutting off alarms, and the lack of compunction that he feels is liberating.

“Captain America! Man, it’s good to see you-“ Lang shouts when the electric door bursts open, but it’s not the Captain who’s come to rescue them, who comes to stop by one cell in particular.

“Steve,” Sam says with a smile, unfazed by this recent development. “About time you got your ass down here.”

-

There’s silence until the Quinjet is airborne again and the sirens blaring out around the prison are echoes in the night. Any hope of a quiet escape has been shot to pieces and autopilot is flying them towards Wakanda, but Steve - ever the bastion of democratic freedom - wants them to have a choice.

And Clint puts his foot down. 

“Hell no,” he snorts. “Dude didn’t even want to know my name at the airport. No way I’m running half-way across the world to hide with him. Besides, Laura’s gonna kill me if I don’t get back soon.”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “What, you think you can just go home and pretend that everything’s normal while the government hunts you down?”

Clint fixes her with a stare that he can’t hold for too long. The red marks around Wanda’s wrists are like beacons to him, reminders of what he got her into because he told her to shift her ass. “Nobody finds that house unless I want them to. Come with me, Wanda. I’ll keep you safe.”

She smiles. “I think, perhaps, America is not the best place for me right now.” 

Not for the first time, Steve wonders if he’s doomed them all to exile. He’ll take whatever punishment is meted out for himself, but his shoulders are only so broad and he’s not sure he can bear knowing that he’s destroyed everyone else’s lives.

Hell is filled with his own demons and they rage incessantly inside his head. He doesn’t have room for more.

-

They land, as before, in the field across from the wooden-slatted house and Clint jumps out, leaving Hawkeye behind and going back as Daddy, husband and playmate-extraordinaire. Lang goes too, after another round of shaking Steve’s hand for too long and the offer of a ride back into the city from the Bartons.

Steve looks at Sam, raises a shoulder to say, _it’s fine if you want to go_. Sam snorts and turns his back on the opened hatch.

“I’ve got no wings, no clothes, and my house keys were in my jacket pocket. I’m not going anywhere.”

On take-off, the jet flattens every blade of grass within a twenty-foot radius, and the force of the engines scorches small patches on the ground. In the morning, Clint’s kids will wake up to find that Dad’s come back and ask when Auntie Nat’s coming round next, and only Laura will see the sadness in Clint’s eyes when he dodges the question.

-

Steve doesn’t know if his package actually reaches Tony, whether it’s opened or thrown unceremoniously across the room if it does arrive. What he does know is that the phone he keeps in his pocket hasn’t rung yet, that Wanda disapproves, and that Sam isn’t sure what to think. 

Neither does Steve, in truth, because Tony recruited a goddamn kid for a battle, and who in their right mind does that? Steve’s not perfect and he cringes at the knowledge that the kid probably woke up the next day a hundred shades of black and blue, but at least he isn’t responsible for bringing a fourteen-year-old in a polyester suit half-way across the world and telling him to fight a war veteran.

What he knows is why Tony signed the Accords, because love is expressed in many forms, even if some of them are slightly unpalatable. They have all woken up in cold sweats with the faces of loved ones and lost ones imprinted on their eyelids. 

He knows why Tony tried to bring him and Bucky in, because this whole mess was about more than just the bond between two boys from Brooklyn, even if Steve couldn’t see past that at the time.

But he doesn’t know who Tony is anymore, where they stand with each other, what sort of world-ending event would have to transpire for Tony to make the call. He doesn’t, in his heart of hearts and darker moments, know if he would go, despite the promise in his letter.

As confused as Steve is about Tony, he’s even more uncertain as to who he is without the shield, without the Avengers, without being Captain America. He doesn’t know what it would take for him to pick the shield up again, doesn’t even know if he could. Thor’s hammer is not the only weapon that demands a certain worthiness from its user, and Steve’s halo is dented after Siberia, as burnished as the metal scratches on Tony’s suit.

Across the lab, Bucky preps for cryo, despite Steve’s attempts to bring him in from the cold. 

“I can’t trust my own mind,” he says, the bleak admission of a weaponised man still adjusting to autonomy and a soft bed. He’s wearing white again, looking bright and pure against the black and navy Steve has taken to wearing. “It’s safer for everyone.”

His world got a little smaller, a little emptier when when Bucky first told him of the plan, and his voice was as cold as the cryo chamber when he asked why Bucky was leaving him again, until Sam calmed him down, told him to stop defining himself against other people. 

Steve spent seventy years being Captain America, hiding behind a metal disc and a helmet with an ‘A’ on it. It’s time, he thinks as the screen covering Bucky freezes over, that he found himself again.


End file.
